Industrial equipment, such as manufacturing equipment used to build or assemble products, may be supported by industrial networking and/or communications networks. In industrial networks, the operation of machines that control industrial processes (e.g., manufacturing, machining, stamping, product packaging, or the like) may be arranged to communicate with other machines and/or computers over the industrial network. In some cases, such communication may be related to supervising and controlling operations of the various industrial machines. Also, the industrial network may be used for collecting data from the industrial machines for monitoring a manufacturing or assembly process, monitoring and improving operational efficiency, throughput, quality control, or the like.
In some cases, the communication/network protocols used in industrial communications networks may differ from, or be incompatible with, standard communications protocols used for common business networks. In some cases this may cause the establishment of connectivity relationships between the two types of networks challenging. In addition, many industrial communication systems were not designed with information security in mind, but now require secure connectivity to be compatible with business network security protocols, or to be compliant with regulatory standards. Thus, it is with respect to these and other considerations that these innovations are made.